Hezbollah

"Enough soccer; we should go occupy the army barracks," said Ali, whose dad, a religious scholar, had sent him to get us. I was 8 and didn't want to stop playing, but we reluctantly followed Ali to the top of the Sheik Abdullah hill, the site of the biggest Lebanese army barracks in the country. There we saw hundreds of women, all in black cloaks, shouting, "Death to Amin Gemayel" - the former Lebanese president - "Death to America," and "Death to Israel." It was the summer of 1982, and I had no idea that I was about to take part in the birth of a movement that would shake the Middle East and the world.

JERUSALEM -- In confidential testimony on last summer's war against the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that the Israeli killing of a group of civilians in Qana in late July was a turning point that delayed a diplomatic resolution. "The fact is, if Qana hadn't happened, there is good reason to believe that we would have been in a very good position to complete the process," he said in testimony released after editing for security purposes. The Qana bombing, which Olmert said damaged Israel's case abroad, occurred when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in Israel trying to secure a cease-fire.

Israel had to act in its own defense The editorial "Israel's rush to war" (May 2) was badly reasoned and offered incomplete information. A reader of the editorial wouldn't know, for instance, that in 2000, Israel complied with U.N. Security Council Resolution 425 and withdrew all of its troops from Lebanon. That same resolution called for Lebanon to deploy its army in southern Lebanon and disarm Hezbollah. Lebanon did not fulfill its obligations under that resolution, and in subsequent years, Hezbollah launched sporadic terror attacks into Israel, killing soldier and civilian alike.

JERUSALEM -- An Arab former legislator is suspected of committing treason and espionage by giving advice to Hezbollah guerrillas during the war in Lebanon last summer, Israeli police officials said yesterday as they released new details of their investigation. Azmi Bishara, an outspoken advocate for Arab citizens of Israel and Palestinians, passed information to Hezbollah and encouraged the group to launch rockets deep into Israeli territory during the 34-day conflict, the police alleged.

Since Israel's founding, its leaders have primarily come from the warrior class, many of them decorated veterans of the country's wars for survival. Ariel Sharon, forced from office because of a debilitating stroke, was the last of that generation, and the military inexperience of Israel's present leadership was never more felt than last summer.

JERUSALEM -- On the eve of the publication of an official report on the Israeli government's failings during last summer's war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, the main topic of public debate is whether Prime Minister Ehud Olmert will be able to hang onto power. Support for Olmert has been shaky since the war, which many Israelis consider to have been a failure. Polls show his approval ratings hovering between 2 percent and 3 percent. Yesterday, a well-informed senior official said Olmert did not intend to resign.

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Two years to the minute after former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was assassinated with a car bomb, thousands of his followers lapsed into quiet yesterday as church bells clanged and a muezzin sang the call to prayer: "God is great." Mourning a little, demonstrating a lot, they choked city squares in Beirut to honor the charismatic Hariri - and to rekindle the spirit of righteous outrage that followed his assassination, which many in the crowd believe was carried out by Syria.

ARLINGTON, Va. -- In the race to the bottom for votes to win office, or to preserve themselves in office, it would be difficult to outrun Republicans as they pander to the Hispanic vote by refusing to control our southern border against an invasion by millions of illegal aliens. Democrats are trying, and they may soon pass Republicans in their cynical pursuit of political power. At the Democrats' winter meeting, a clergyman was asked to deliver the invocation. He was Husham Al-Husainy of the Karbalaa Islamic Education Center, a Shiite mosque in Dearborn, Mich.

WASHINGTON --The Bush administration will inform Congress tomorrow that Israel might have violated agreements with the United States when it fired U.S.-supplied cluster munitions into southern Lebanon during its fight with Hezbollah last summer, the State Department said yesterday. The finding, though preliminary, has prompted a contentious debate within the administration over whether the United States should penalize Israel for its use of cluster munitions against towns and villages where Hezbollah had placed its rocket launchers.